The People’s Republic of China will stick to its highly-controversial one-child policy, which focuses on population control by restricting most Chinese couples to just one child. The policy has been in place in the communist country since 1979.

“I, on behalf of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, extend profound gratitude to all, the people in particular, for their support of the national course,” said Li Bin, who leads the commission.

“So we will stick to the family-planning policy in the coming decades,” she said over the weekend, according to the state-run China Daily.

The cruel measure has lead to families favoring male children over female counterparts. When couples find they are having a girl rather than a boy, the child is often aborted or abandoned after delivery. The girls end up in orphanages, where their sole hope is finding a loving home elsewhere in the world.

The policy is also discriminatory. Families with more plentiful bank accounts are able to bribe officials or simply pay the hefty fines. Meanwhile, reports indicate that women without birthing licenses have been forced to undergo abortions in certain regions of the country.

Official figures from the communist government indicate that more than 400 million births have been “prevented” since 1979. China’s population today totals around 1.4 billion.